[Hilo oficial] Halo 3 (#9)

BUNGIE.NET escribió:Halo 3 AutoUpdate is Up
Posted by Frankie at 2/19/2008 5:45 PM PST

NOTE: You may experience a few laggier-than-usual games after the update is installed as it resets your hosting and network connection history. This history should grow rapidly for an improved situation.

NOTE 2:

If you run into a map loading error after the autoupdate, where a map freezes at a certain percentage loaded, try restarting Halo 3 while holding down the “A” button and "Up" on the D-Pad simultaneously while the game is booting. That may help with your problem. If the problem persists after this step, try following the normal steps for cleaning your disc or disc tray.

SHORT CHANGE LIST

(There are many, many more items in the change list which are not being published here, to prevent potential abuse, but none of these are major items.)



* Melee contests have been rebalanced
* Dying while performing a melee or weapon lunge will no longer accelerate the dead player
* The Elite Commando shoulder armor variant has been unlocked for all players
* Improved the “Prefer Good Connection” option
* Added backend hopper support for DLC custom game variants
* Fixed a problem with the Theater when a player tried to view a saved film for a DLC map he or she doesn’t own
* Fixed a UI error in the Theater when a party leader selects a film that is invalid for a party client
* Fixed a bug that under rare conditions could allow a BXB sequence
* Fixed a Dirty Disc Error that could occur when loading the same DLC map twice in a row
* Added a visible version string to the Halo 3 main menu

And now for the long explanations.

Multiplayer Design Lead Tyson Green checked a week ago in with a lengthy explanation of the melee system in Halo 3, how it’s different from Halo 2’s what worked about both versions, what didn’t work and how it’s being addressed by the auto update. here's a reminder of what he explained.

Tyson says:

The Short Version

Melee contests will only produce a winner if he has a sizeable health advantage over the loser. Otherwise, both players may die in the clash.

What Halo 2 Did

Put simply, in Halo 2, whoever threw the first melee won. Sounds perfect, right? Not quite.

Get your Einstein on, we’re going to talk about relativity. Specifically, the relative observations of host versus client. In Halo 3, across our entire population, we observe an average latency between host and client of around 80-100ms, which is around three frames. Assuming 90ms of latency, consider what happens when the host and client both throw melee attacks at exactly the same time. The host will see the client’s melee attack as many as three frames later, while the client will see the host’s melee attack three frames later. Who attacked first?

Well, in the halcyon days of Halo 2, the host made that determination. Which means his melee was first and the client lost the melee fight far more often than they should have. And in the event of two clients attacking simultaneously, the one with lower latency to the host would appear to have attacked first, and would be the winner. In a peer-to-peer environment with latency, it is nigh impossible to determine exactly who attacked first.

Over Halo 2’s three years online, many people adapted and got used to preemptively throwing a melee, but it was still fundamentally unfair in favor of the host or people with faster connections.

So, to be clear and upfront, we will not be returning to those days of letting the host win when the outcome is in doubt, aka. first melee wins.

The Halo 3 “Fix”

In Halo 3, there is explicit special treatment for what is called a “melee contest”, which occurs when two melee attacks occur almost simultaneously. Specifically, when the host starts to throw a melee attack, there is a short window after that (three frames, or approximately 100ms) during which the host will watch for a retaliatory melee attack. If one arrives inside that window, it is a contest. Besides smoothing out the latency differences between clients (it works the same way when one client melees another), this allows a client with a ping as high as 100ms to compete with the host on a far more even footing than Halo 2 allowed.

So now we have the contests, but how are they resolved? Having determined that we cannot trust timing in an environment with latency, we instead use the remaining health (including shields) of the contestants as the tie-breaker. This is about as fair as you can get, within the conventions of Halo—the guy who did more damage comes out on top. Specifically, the winner of the contest still takes melee damage from the loser, but is protected from death and lives to fight another day.

On paper, this method addresses the host advantage (among others) and is scrupulously fair. There’s just one problem:

The Fatal Flaw

Halo 3’s system is inscrutable. This is most famously illustrated by a splitscreen film (eliminating latency as a factor) of two players running at each other, firing, and throwing melee attacks on the same frame. One drops dead, and it isn’t clear why, so the result is declared to be random. The real reason is, of course, that one player landed one or two more bullets than the other, but that isn’t anywhere near obvious.

Any time you have a game system which players cannot understand, it might as well be random. No matter how fair the tiebreaker may be, if a single Assault Rifle bullet can slip by and decide the outcome, it might as well be random. And randomness is a poor substitute for tactics and skillful execution.

Addressing the Flaw

We considered and ultimately rejected some ideas that could have made melee contests produce a less inscrutable result. A major consideration was that we wanted to minimize the impact on how Halo 3 plays to the greatest degree possible, while still addressing the problem. Radically changing the mechanics of melee combat is not something we want at this point.

Ultimately, the change is targeted at the unpredictable outcome of a contest. Simply stated, it works like this: when a melee contest occurs, and both players are close to the same health (including shields), no special protection is given to either player. This means the outcome of a close melee contest can be death for both participants, but that a player who decisively injures his opponent prior to closing for a melee will continue to enjoy the victorious outcome.

For those of you uninterested in the precise details, the upshot is this: if you close for a melee attack and are at a clear advantage (or disadvantage), the outcome will be clear. If the outcome is unclear, too close to call, you will likely trade kills with your victim. But you should no longer watch your opponent saunter away for no clear reason (and if you do, check the film—it tells all.)

The Nitty Gritty

If you’re still reading, you’re probably interested in some details, so we won’t skimp.

A player in MP has a grand total of 115 hit points (to adopt a common term.) 45 of these are body hit points, 70 are shield hit points. For reference, a single AR bullet does 7.5 points of damage, and a BR bullet does 6. A melee attack does 70 for most weapons, with some weapons (notably the Brute weapons) doing 72.

When entering a melee contest, the combined body and shield hit points are compared. If the difference is above a threshold, then one player is determined to have won decisively and is protected from death. After testing with a variety of weapons, we settled on a threshold of 26.5 hit points (slightly rounded.) This translates into 4+ AR bullets worth of damage to decisively win a melee contest, instead of simply having 1 more hit point than the other guy.

There is one more wrinkle to this: your invisible body hit points do recharge, but at a different rate from your shields. While ordinarily this is a non-issue (we’ve always made this largely transparent), it can affect the outcome of a contest. For those of you keeping score, body hit points start regenerating 10 seconds after last taking damage, at a rate of 9 hp/sec. So if your shields are up but you’re fresh from taking a beating, you could still be in trouble in a contest.

YMMV, etc.

Despite our best efforts, this system cannot cover all cases: if your latency is beyond 100ms, you can still get into situations where the host legitimately believes that your melee did not arrive in time. In testing, we did catch a couple of films where perfectly balanced, simultaneous melee attacks produced an unexpected winner. But these were films recorded by the client—the host film told a different story, showing a very late melee.

The moral: when in doubt, check the host’s film, because latency still matters. Just a whole lot less than Halo 2.

Also, while we were in there, we excised a BXB-style glitch before it gathered popularity, and fixed that strangeness where bodies would be hurled with unearthly force by a mid-melee death. We sincerely apologize to people who enjoyed the latter bug—it was pretty funny."

ruluque escribió:Antes se me actualizo el juego y ahora pone 1.1

Alguien sabe que trae nuevo?

O que soluciona?

Edit: vale ya

fran_jrr escribió:Buenas a todos!! hace muy poco que tengo el juego y la campaña me parece genial!! aun así tengo algunas dudas por favor intenten contestar!
1) que armas son las mejores? (hay mucha variedad y no se cual coger, a parte del nombre indicar una descripción o donde conseguirla)
2) que moralidad del multijugador es la mas divertida? (he probado varias pero me matan desequida)
3) alguien me puede mostrar un Link para descargarme la guía oficial??

gracias y salu2!!!

fran_jrr escribió:Buenas a todos!! hace muy poco que tengo el juego y la campaña me parece genial!! aun así tengo algunas dudas por favor intenten contestar!
1) que armas son las mejores? (hay mucha variedad y no se cual coger, a parte del nombre indicar una descripción o donde conseguirla)
2) que moralidad del multijugador es la mas divertida? (he probado varias pero me matan desequida)
3) alguien me puede mostrar un Link para descargarme la guía oficial??

gracias y salu2!!!

fran_jrr escribió:Gracias por responder, supongo que acabare comprándome la guía oficial (aunque gastarme 14€ con la de juegos buenos que hay duele mucho), otra preguntilla para jugar la campaña en cooperativo en el LIVE como se hace? cuantas personas pueden jugar la campaña en cooperativo? y por ultimo...con un código de 48h se puede jugar la campaña on-line?

gracias y salu2!!!

Kayru escribió:Treft, cual es esa calavera, no caigo...

ZeuX escribió:Aún no se sabe cuando se hacen gratuitos los mapas?

yamo100 escribió:iban a ser gratuitos algun dia??

ZeuX escribió:

Sí, como hicieron con el Gears of War.

PD: ya lo sé xD. Cuando salga el pack de mapas Legendario saldrá gratis el Heroico, osea, de aquí 2 meses aprox.

gaara9 escribió:wenas; una duda q me ha surgido estos días jugando al halo3 en legendario en cooperativo; cuando t pasas una misión t aparece en el menú el símbolito de que t lo has pasado en legendaria, así vas viendo que misiones te quedan y tal...

PERO cuándo se deja una misión y luego otro día la vuelves a empezar desde ese punto de control...¿el juego no t da la misión como pasada,verdad???

fran_jrr escribió:con un código de 48h se puede jugar la campaña on-line?

yamo100 escribió:una preguntita, sabeis que dia sera gratis el pack de mapas Heroico??

salu2!

yamo100 escribió:una preguntita, sabeis que dia sera gratis el pack de mapas Heroico??

salu2!

novax escribió:Alguien me puede decir los capitulos del juego en Español? Es que quiero saber por donde voy y solo las encuentro en Ingles. Voy por "El fin del viaje". Supongo que me quedara un buen rato pero quiero saber cuanto mas o menos.

Kololsimo escribió:Por el momento sólo decir que cometí un error jugando a bioshock,cod 4,gears of war antes que a este juego...hasta el momento me parece una soberana mierda....quizá mi cabreo se deba a que he llegado a un punto en que marcho sobre un jeep como ocurría en halo 2...y es igual de lamentable que en aquél, solo que ademas en este se ha quedado pillado el pavo con el coche dando vueltas continuamente sobre el mismo sitio...menuda decepción de juego.

¿Cómo coño ha cosechado tales notas en medios especializados?
Comprendo que el 1 y el 2 tuvieran esa consideración , pero este por el momento me parece....una milonga sobrevalorada.

Black29 escribió:
Pues deja de jugar cojones ... si no te gustaba una meirda Halo 2 para que coño juegas al 3 ¿Eres sadomasoquista?

Kololsimo escribió:[oki]

!EDITO!:no he probado el online de este juego...¿merece la pena?

yelamoreno escribió:Si acabas de conseguir el lanzallamas , creo que te queda bastante todavia de pantalla.

El lanzallamas en esa pantalla tampoco es un arma que yo usaria como prioritaria....aunque en esa pantalla las armas no abundan , cogete alguna de corto y medio alcance que te vendra bien para matar a esos bichos que lanzan espinas o lo que sea.

Saludo

CISKO escribió:toi pensando en pillarlo de segunda mano,creeis que merece la pena comprarlo sin haber jugado a los halo anteriores?

ayudante escribió:para q kieres los mapas si estas baneado y no podras jugar?

Kololsimo escribió:Retiro todo lo dicho por mi acerca de este juego....he seguido jugando y me parece un juegazo,los vehículos están geniales (excepto el jeep cuando vas de paquete,jeje),adictivo a tope , frenético...

Muy recomendado.